Grand Prix: The Killer Years

Grand Prix: The Killer Years

If you are in to motorsport you MUST WATCH THIS VIDEO. It is a 1 hour documentary on safety, or the lack of it, during the mid 60's to mid 70's Grand Prix era. Some unbelievably good footage, interspersed with some unbelievably sad footage - particularly the last scene. 

It is very easy to forget how dangerous motorsport can be, especially in today's world of safety first, carbon composites and CAD engineering techniques. But all this started in the late sixties when Sir Jackie Stewart started his crusade.

It's also nice to be reminded that the Nurburgring Nordschleife has 186 corners and that the cars used to get airborne 16 times a lap. Wish I could have seen it with my own eyes...

Watch the video here.

Pile Up!

Pile Up!

I have seen some weird stuff in motorsport. But this??

How embarrasing

How embarrasing

Really. I've been an event manager. This is either staged, or they got a new tech guy in for the next show.

To Tablet or not??

To Tablet or not??

Been a while since blogging and it is not because I have nothing to say. Actually I have a few things that I want to write about, but for various reasons can not. But having a conversation with @richiesroom did give me a moment to think...

Part of what I can't talk about yet involves me getting a tablet. I want one because I will need to get emails quickly on the road since I will be working from a car. I will also need to do some work online, but don't really need anything powerful for that. And want is the key word here. I reality I guess I don't NEED a tablet, but it would be useful :)

The question that always come to the front of my mind when thinking about this is why we do have so many devices? I have always tried to live with as few devices as possible. That's why I've had a smart phone years before Apple made them cool with the iPhone. I don't understand the need to have a phone, an MP3 player, an e-reader, an digital camera. Why can't we have one device to do everything? My life is organised in my phone. I read my books on my phone. I listen to music on my phone. I check the weather on my phone. I even make phone calls on my phone. But I don't do emails on my phone and I don't surf the web on my phone.

And this is where the tablet comes in. It 's big enough to make it useful for reading emails and surfing the web. It's small enough to use in the car and fast enough to be instant on. The only problem I foresee is it becoming my tool of choice.

My phone runs the risk of becoming only a phone.

Fixed - stuttery playback from WHS

Fixed - stuttery playback from WHS

Finally, I fixed it! The home server has been doing funny things recently, more specifically, the streaming side of things has been rat shit. Hi def MKVs were the worse – basically unwatchable - but even low def AVI shows where annoying to watch too.

I tried a heap of things:

• Scan disk drive pool
• Defrag drive pool
• Improve network efficiency (network is only 100Mb – old technology!)
• Remove network bottle necks
• Search web for similar stories

Nothing seemed to work. However I did trace the problem to what looked like a faulty drive. I had installed a 1Tb drive from a media centre I had built for a client that was giving them problems – stuttery playback as it turned out – and I had installed it in the server to see what it was like – what it the drive or was it their system? 

It turned out it was the drive. I tried to remove the drive using the WHS drive removal (the drive is part of a pool of drives) but that failed. The drive problems were preventing it from being read from correctly which meant WHS couldn’t move the data off that physical drive to another in the pool.

At last I thought fuck it – disconnect the drive and see what happens. At worst I would lose the pool, at best nothing - the system would recover without the drive and I would only lose data specific to that physical drive. 

Turns out the best case scenario won. Woo! #WIN We lost a bit of data that was not duplicated (kids educational DVDs which my wife is none too happy about) and that’s it. WHS detected the drive was not there, re-established the symbolic links to the data that is duplicated and removed the drive from the pool.

Wish I had done that from the start!

Awesome Photo

Awesome Photo

I know it is not cool to make light of other peoples plight. And I am certainly not doing that here. 

I do love nature and the raw power that it can display. Recent cyclones and floods in Australia have fascinated me and I always want to be there as it is happening. But for your viewing pleasure I have come across this amazing photo from the NZ earthquake. It is taken moments after the main quake (near as I can tell) and graphically shows the power that a quake can have.

It is simply a great photo

Photo courtesy of http://www.facebook.com/rebuildchristchurch

Automating a Tipping Competition

Automating a Tipping Competition

Being an F1 fan, I started a small tipping competition last year at work. The basis for the comp is that you tip your top three drivers. You earn what ever points they collect – the person with the highest number of points wins the round, and the person with the most points for the season wins that – which is half the money collected over the year. Nice.

So this year I wanted to automate the tipping process to prevent me getting a rush of emails/sms before each race. I figured there’d have to be a web based solution for this problem, but I had no idea where to start. So I looked a tipping competition scripts for Joomla (a CMS I have just started to play with). Everything was for footy – pick a winner from a choice of two. I needed to be able to pick three people from a list of 24. Nothing came close.

Then a mate suggested a survey. That’s a great idea, I thought to myself. Simply ask a multiple choice question from a drop down box three times. Easy. So I start searching via Google. All the big names in surveys who offer free version don’t allow you to export the results. All I could seem to do was copy them from a webpage. Fuck that – I was trying to make this easy for myself!

And this is where twitter comes in. An astute business called SurveyGizmo is busy trolling tweets for the term ‘survey’. Up comes my question to the twitterverse about how to do what I am wanting to do. Quick as a flash (and I mean with 30 minutes or so) I have a tweet from them saying they can do what I want. So checked it out and its great – it does everything I want!

The power of twitter has proven it self yet again!

And if you are interested you can check out the F1 Tipping comp here: http://eepurl.com/cGp86

Corporate Mentality

Corporate Mentality

1. I ask for internet access on my sim card. Denied. I can understand – cost related issue.

2. I offer to take over my sim card so I can get what I want. Denied – not company policy.

3. Fine, I offer to source cheaper alternative and have company pay for cheaper alternative. Denied. Against company policy.

4. Fine – fuck you. I go and get my own sim card and pay for calls under cap and divert work number to my sim

5. I now get a please explain because diverting calls is against company policy

Not sure where I will go from here. Do I argue the point? Do I ignore it knowing it will mostly like go away? Instinct tells me the later will work (it has in the past), but I am also thinking I am spoiling for a fight. I do need to work on my conflict management skills and this could be a good flash point. 

I need to think about it…... 'cause what I want to do is:

Book No. 96

Book No. 96

Just finished book 27 on my list of 100 greatest novels of all time. Now I am not going to bore with a review (and I really couldn't be bothered - this ain't school) - Kane and Abel is a pretty good book. It’s not great – probably why it is no. 96 on the list. I did learn something though – revenge that lasts a life time is not useful. Or helpful. Let bygones be bygones.

And always love your kids no matter what they do.

Good advice, really. Now, on to the next book – Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

WTF?

WTF?

This is, without doubt, one of the freakest things I have ever seen.

Aston Martin Cygnet

Aston Martin Cygnet

Strange things are afoot in the car industry. Porsche said they would never build a 4 door, yet we have Cayenne. And now Aston Martin have released their first ‘city’ car based on the Toyota iQ. Like the iQ we won’t get the Cygnet in Australia, but it does beg the question why not? For the well heeled this seems like a great choice for putting around town. As the CEO of Aston Martin says “I don’t want to drive a 500 horse power sports car into the city every day.” Fair comment.

And this is where the Cygnet comes into its own. It doesn’t have 500 bhp, but it is a luxury car. Leather seats, Alcantara interior, satin chrome on the inside, polished chrome on the outside, 9 (yes 9) airbags, heated seats, keyless entry and start, satellite navigation and a 5 piece luggage set custom designed for the Cygnet. This is not an ordinary vehicle.

And the price? If you have to ask, you won’t be buying….

100 Greatest Novels of All time

100 Greatest Novels of All time

Well that is a BIG call. Actualy the list is from BBC's The Big Read program. I profess to know nothing about the program but I did come across it when I was searching for a list of books to read.

You see I stumbled across (not stumbled upon) a list of 100 of the greatest movies of all time, as voted for by Empire Magazine. Being a bit of a movie buff I thought "That sounds like a great idea" especially becuase is was created by movie enthusiasts, not maketing / PR machines that had a barrow to push. I think it took me three/four years to get through them all - it was not a concerted effort by any means!! But i finished it and the original (photocopied) list has been framed and now hangs in my study.

With that list completed a new challenge was called for and being an avid reader, books it had to be. But the list could not be any old list. I found quite a few lists but they all seemed stuffy or full of rubbish - but the real killer was that none had sci-fi books on them. I LOVE sci-fi. My favourite book is the increasingly inaccurately named Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Any list had to have sci-fi, and the list I found has my favuorite book as #4. I am/was happy with that!!

Anyway if you are intested the list is attached.

So far I have read 26 of the books. Which means I am currently reading my 27th book - Kane & Able by Jeffery Archer. No. 92 on the list.